Unhealthy Work

Causes, Consequences, Cures

Peter Schnall, Marnie Dobson, Ellen Rosskam, Ray Elling, Peter L. Schnall, Ray H. Elling

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780895033352
• eBook ISBN: 9781351840842
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Work, so fundamental to well-being, has its darker and more costly side. Work can adversely affect our health, well beyond the usual counts of injuries that we think of as 'occupational health'. The ways in which work is organized - its pace and intensity, degree of control over the work process, sense of justice, and employment security, among other things - can be as toxic to the health of workers as the chemicals in the air. These work characteristics can be detrimental not only to mental well-being but to physical health. Scientists refer to these features of work as 'hazards' of the 'psychosocial' work environment. One key pathway from the work environment to illness is through the mechanism of stress; thus we speak of 'stressors' in the work environment, or 'work stress'. This is in contrast to the popular psychological understandings of 'stress', which locate many of the problems with the individual rather than the environment. In this book we advance a social environmental understanding of the workplace and health. The book addresses this topic in three parts: the important changes taking place in the world of work in the context of the global economy (Part I); scientific findings on the effects of particular forms of work organization and work stressors on employees' health, 'unhealthy work' as a major public health problem, and estimates of costs to employers and society (Part II); and, case studies and various approaches to improve working conditions, prevent disease, and improve health (Part III).

PART I

The Changing Nature of Work

OVERVIEW

Work in advanced industrialized societies has undergone a continuous transformation over the last 200 years. As globalization proceeds, more people are drawn into its global processes. The end of the “cold war” and the relatively recent entry of Chinese, Indian, Russian, and other workers into the global economy have resulted in a doubling of the global workforce to more than three billion workers during the last 30 years. A debate has raged over the social consequences of these changes: whether they have benefitted or harmed working people. There has been a rising standard of living for many in Western societies paralleled by better health and longer life expectancies. Still, there are some bleak realities of life under capitalism which demand attention, not the least of which among them is the fact, according to the ILO,¹ that as of 2003 some 1.4 billion people work for less than U.S. $2/day and that 20% of the world’s working people (600 million) earn less than U.S. $1/day which is well below the extreme poverty level. Concomitantly, 25,000 people die each day worldwide from hunger (more than nine million each year). One must inquire whether these are the consequences of globalization or has globalization acted to mitigate these outcomes?

The four chapters in this section attempt to capture the changes that have occurred worldwide, and particularly in the United States and Canada, during the last several decades, including the quantity and kind of work, the composition of the workforce, and changes in employment contracts. In her chapter “Economic Globalization and Its Effects on Labor,” Chrisy Moutsatsos places current workplace conditions in a larger context of global economic changes since the 1970s. Many of these changes, she argues, have resulted from the economic philosophy and practices of neo-liberalism which have led to deregulation of labor markets, and “the dismantling of the social protections and redistributive policies of the earlier welfare state.” This chapter explores why the American workplace has shifted from production to service provision, flexible labor, and outsourcing its jobs overseas. Changes in the U.S. workplace are placed in the context of changing economies around the world. Low-income workers in China and India are part of a growing global labor force, out-competing low-income workers in the United States and Europe. The key issues in this shift include structural adjustment, offshore manufacturing and free trade zones, manufacturing and service economies, lean production, flexible labor, the decline of unions, privatization, and the decline of welfare as well as the increase in gaps between the rich and the poor. She notes that the changes that have occurred over the last three decades in the composition of the workforce, the quantity and kind of work, and employment contracts are profound. The proportion of the employed population working both part-time and greater than full-time has increased. In addition, a much higher proportion of the working age population is now in the labor market than in 1970, principally because of the increase in numbers of working women. Among the employed population, while the length of the work week has changed little, the total work effort has increased dramatically, due to an increase in the number of weeks worked each year. Conversely, “private time” and “vacation time” have declined steeply, meaning less time to recover from work-related injury or fatigue. These changes in the numbers working and the increasing quantity of work have occurred in tandem with a shift away from manufacturing industries and occupations to service industries and occupations and a blurring of the traditional distinctions between salary and wage earners.

Historically, salaried workers were paid a fixed salary and provided some degree of job security to design or oversee production (“white-collar workers”); while the greater majority were paid hourly wages (hence the term “wage earners”) to carry out production without job security (“blue-” or “pink-collar workers”). However, in recent years there has been a melding of working conditions, with blue-collar workers being asked to be involved in improving production processes, while white-collar workers are no longer provided the same levels of job security.

Paralleling the worldwide changes in work noted in the first chapter in this section have been the profound changes in socioeconomic status with increasing social inequality and unequal income distribution, particularly in the United States. In his chapter, Jeffrey Johnson describes and defines the varying definitions of social class as it is used to understand the ongoing association between socioeconomic status and health. He presents data on the relationships between social class, occupational grade, and cardiovascular disease and examines contemporary debates over the social mechanisms that allow income inequality to impact population health. Workers directly feel the cost of income inequality as they find themselves unable to find work at a living wage and increasingly find that they are priced out of health care insurance in the United States. Income inequality is being fueled by the larger global economy through increasing part-time work and underemployment. The intensification of work leads to more health problems, which results in higher costs to business, or if there is a lack of health insurance, the health problem may become more severe before being effectively treated in an emergency situation.

Smith and Frank take up the issue of the impact of globalization on job characteristics in Canada in their chapter “The Changing Nature of Work in Canada and Other Developed Countries: What Do the Trends Over Time Tell Us?” In contrast to the United States where there is a paucity of data on the nature and quality of work, the Canadian Labor Market Survey demonstrates that it is possible to collect such data nationally. They note that there have been a number of changes in the Canadian labor force over the last 30 years. Underemployment and multiple job holdings have both increased, although these patterns differed by gender and level of education with women now generally more likely to be both underemployed and multiple job holders compared to men. The percentage of underemployed and unemployed labor force participants increases with lower levels of education. They find wages are increasing in Canada but are unequally distributed with low-wage, uneducated, unskilled workers reporting no real change in labor market income in the last 20 years. The Canadian data show increases in service work (with production decreasing; paid and unpaid overtime; dual-worker families, and absenteeism due to family responsibilities; the proportion of highly skilled or educated workers doing jobs that do not require their skills or education; and part-time work, multiple job holding, temporary work, and contract labor). Consequently, as work expands, private life contracts, with less time for family and one’s self.

Ed Yelin addresses in his chapter, “The Changing Nature of Work in the United States,” the impact of globalization on the U.S. workforce from two perspectives: 1) changes in employment and 2) the distribution of jobs by occupation and industry. With regard to employment, he notes that more people have entered the U.S. workforce during the last 40 years mostly due to the fact that women now comprise more than 50% of the workforce (the percentage of men working has actually fallen slightly during this period with the largest decrease being among the 55- to 64-year-old age group). Stagnant wages for men may be one reason women are leaving home to enter the workplace.

His findings include: 1) increased labor force participation among working age adults, especially women; 2) increased numbers of people per family in the work-force; 3) increases in the number of weeks worked per year; 4) increases in part-time work, nonstandard shifts, non-consecutive days off, and multiple job-holding; and 5) a decrease in blue-collar occupations (manufacturing and extractive industries), and an increase in white-collar occupations. He draws on Paul Osterman’s earlier work on historical patterns of employment suggesting that there has been a flattening of the occupational hierarchy consistent with a “democratization” of work tasks. But democratization is not necessarily all positive, as it is accompanied by an increase in contingent employment, job loss, and job insecurity. In sum, job demands have increased significantly, while job security has decreased significantly. In addition, he notes, as does Chrisy Moutsatsos in her chapter, that U.S. workers are working more hours per year due mostly to working a greater number of weeks per year (as opposed to hours per week). Changes in the nature of the type of jobs in the United States appear similar to those noted in Canada by Peter Smith and John Frank (authors of chapter 4) with manufacturing workers decreasing 25% while service workers in the United States have increased 300%. These changes reflect the impact of off-shoring—the movement of production jobs from industrialized Western countries to t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I: The Changing Nature of Work
• Part II: The Health and Economic Costs of “Unhealthy” Work
• Part III: Intervention
• Conclusion
• Conclusion
• Index